This is Diabetes Awareness Month and as I’ve mentioned, it’s been tough since my oldest son was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes. My job as a parent is to make things as smooth as possible and when I heard about Genteel’s Gentle Lancing Device, which is billed as a no-pain way to draw blood with vacuum and depth control, I was intrigued. Would it really work? Multiple finger pricks and taking insulin 4x a day hasn’t been fun for my son. Even though we recently got a Dexcom Monitor, I was shocked at how many times a day we still need to draw blood. Plus, if his Dexcom Monitor tells us he’s really low or really high, I have to double check with a blood draw, besides calibrating the Dexcom 2x a day). With Genteel, could we make that painless? For the answer, read on. G
enteel Gentle Lancing Device Review – for Kids and Adults with Diabetes

This is the description on how the Genteel Gentle Lancing Device works: “With its patented Butterfly Touch Technology®, the Genteel® Lancing Device gets test blood from anywhere on the body without pain. Using vacuum, vibration, and depth control, the perfect drop of blood can be drawn, even from the shallowest test site. The lancet only reaches blood capillaries and avoids hitting pain nerves altogether.”

Finger pricking has been painful with the lancing device that came with our monitor. Plus I had to constantly had to squeeze his poor fingers to draw blood. Sometimes there wasn’t enough blood to go on the test strip, so I would have to prick his finger again. Frankly, it was almost worse than taking the insulin injections and my son’s poor fingers were taking a beating. We had thought the Dexcom monitor would eliminate all the blood draws, but it doesn’t. You have to calibrate the monitor at least two times a day to see if it’s right. Also, if his Dexcom goes off in the middle of the night (or rather when, because it’s most nights), I have to test his blood sugar to see if the Dexcom is right.

With Genteel, things are very different. I can grab his hand (he still prefers to use his fingers to draw blood), and use the Genteel to draw blood so I can put some on a test strip. The Genteel is amazing and yes, this really works. It doesn’t hurt him!!

I can go into his room, pull out his finger (all while trying to balance my mobile phone to see what I am doing) and then use it, take the drops of blood to put onto the testing strip and see his blood sugar numbers. It’s SO MUCH EASIER!!! We now use this to test his blood any time we need to manually check or calibrate his Dexcom monitor.

To activate the vacuum on the Genteel:

1. Create a seal between the person’s skin and contact tip, you don’t need to push to hard – just enough to prevent air gaps.

2. Push and hold the button. Keep the button pressed for about 8 seconds. You should see a blood drop forming.

3. Remove your finger from the button before lifting the device off his skin. This step is important because if you lift the device off the skin without releasing the vacuum you will cause the blood to splatter inside the nozzle.

Benefits of the Genteel:

What’s Included:

Genteel uses their own Butterfly Touch Lancets — but what I liked is that you could use other brands – you just need the square shaft lancets. Butterfly Touch Lancets were designed for use with the new Genteel Lancing Device. They also are compatible with these popular brands: Soft Touch, Soft Touch II, BD Lancet Device, OneTouch UltraSoft, FreeStyle, Microlet, Microlet 2, Vaculance, Auto-Lancet, Penlet Plus, Penlet II, On Call Plus, and many other square-based lancet holders.

Check out the video that my son and I made.

These are the different contact tips (we liked the factory installed #1, but it didn’t take enough blood for us), #4 did hurt a little, but #2 (the yellow one) was absolutely perfect for us and we use that all the time now). I recommend trying all the different tips to see which one is better for use.

So, what do you think? Would your T1D child or family member with Diabetes want to try this out?

My son was just diagnosed a week ago and we are really struggling with the pain of finger pricks. We’re also up and down a lot right now so having to test more. It’s been a frustrating week and I am so hoping it gets better!

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